Birds and Beasts
by Shadsie
Summary: Pit believed that humans were special because they were, among the earthly creatures, the closest to the gods. Strangely enough, he'd convinced Viridi to spare them extinction by convincing her that they were beasts. Mostly, she was just staying her hand for his sake.


_**Disclaimer:**__ Kid Icarus belongs to Nintendo. The only things that are mine are my musings on nature and an interesting experience I once had with a small bird (in my case, a glue-strip-fly-trap being involved rather than a break to wings and an end in the creature being sallied forth to a wildlife rehab center)._

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**BIRDS AND BEASTS **

Pit thought humans were special.

He tried to convince Viridi of this by arguing that, of all of earthly creatures, their hearts were closest to the gods. Ironically, perhaps, and definitely unintentionally, he had convinced her to spare them extinction by helping her to realize that they were beasts.

He'd been spending many of the days of peace he'd fought for in Viridi's domain. He'd never given much thought to the fields and forests before his and Palutena's involvement with her in the recent cosmic war. Pit's major love – besides Paluntena, of course – was the sky. As Viridi got to know the little angel, she saw in him the capacity for all kinds of love. His relationship with Palutena seemed almost romantic on the surface, but in many ways, it as actually more like family – or like a knight to his pedestal-perched lady, and, ultimately, a close and caring deity and a true worshipper.

His feelings for Viridi were just a little different. Initial animosity gave way to a partnership of mutual benefit (during the war). After that, a friendly relationship full of sarcastic banter became the order. Perhaps, something else was brewing as well. As he spent his days exploring the deepest of her forests – places hostile to mortals that she'd opened up just for him, he seemed to be falling in love with her realm. She'd grant him the power of flight in Palutena's stead so that he could reach the branches of the tallest trees. He visited the cliff-side crags where the hawks nested and the caves where the swallows made their nests.

He was sad when Viridi spoke to him about how humans would invade the caves with rope-and-pulley systems to steal the little birds' hard-built nests, only to keep on taking them when the nests turned red from the blood in swallows' raw-rubbed throats when they kept on trying to make new nests for their babies. Well, he was sad after he got over his initial disgust over learning what "bird's nest soup" was. The angel didn't think the idea of soup made of bird-spit sounded very appetizing. Viridi was amused at the shade of green his face had turned when he'd learned that information.

After watching a group of men on a harvest and listening to their conversations unseen, he argued with Viridi that they were taking the nests to survive by selling them. They needed to provide for their families, just as the birds did – and there were always parts of the caves that men could not reach, even with all of their inventions. The birds and the predators of their nests thus struck a kind of harmony. Viridi grudgingly admitted that men were acting as any other predator would.

…The difference being that humans were greedier at it, because they were better at it, and they were better at it because they had that capacity to think in the abstract and had that spark of invention that his Palutena loved about them.

"Sure, they're creative," Viridi had groused, "but they create destruction!"

"It's pretty much all they've got!" Pit had chimed. "They don't have horns, or tails, or fur… or wings! They survive by using their minds."

And the little wide-eyed-idealist had a point. Wolves would forge weapons if they could. Rabbits and deer would clear-cut lands to plant the things they liked to eat. In fact, they often chose to browse in the fields created by humans over the meadows she'd created. Viridi always smiled a little when the wild beasts and insects ate a little too much, dug a little too deep and chewed too greedily into domesticated wood, causing problems for a given human village. When that happened and winter came, so many of their aged and their spawn would die off, keeping things to a level balance.

Pit didn't like that attitude, but he said that he tried to see things from her perspective. Maybe it was because he was talking to his darker half a lot – the one that roamed where he pleased. Maybe it was because Pit was spending time walking through woods and getting to know all of the little birds that had long been the objects of his jealousy for their ability to soar of their own accord. He got to know the groundborne beasts as well, including the little grubs and gophers that burrowed under the earth. The ground was their "sky," just as the waters in the rivers were the "sky" of the fish.

One day, Viridi watched Pit as he perched upon a rock on the shore of a lake in a crater in a place that humans had not yet discovered. He looked skyward at the blue expanse of heaven and stretched out his wings against the sun. Viridi had long been trying to "place" his wings. Every kind of bird had a different set. Seabirds had, long, arched wings that carried them over long distances across the ocean. A few species could stay aloft for years at a time if they needed to. Hawks and vultures rode thermals, their wings built wide so they could stay upon the wind with a few languid flaps as they looked for food far below. Falcons had wings built for diving and speed, sharp-tipped for cutting the air like knives. The chickens that humans kept had small wings that were very tasty with spicy sauce.

The colors of wings varied from spotted and stripped to blend in with the trees to the vibrant reds and greens of songbirds and parrots, which showed their colors to attract mates. There were peacocks, which were not flightless but might as well have been in the mating season when their tails dragged them down. Viridi taught Pit all about the flightless birds of her fields and forests, too, so he wouldn't feel alone.

As Viridi watched him stretch, she decided that Pit had swan-wings. The feathers were white and pure. Even though he was an angel that couldn't fly, the wings "useless" without a divine blessing, they were magnificent. Their owner matched them, insufferably pure in spirit – obnoxiously optimistic – eternally hopeful in regards to creatures that didn't deserve his faith.

Viridi wondered if he was a very ugly cygnet when he was younger. He certainly was as awkward as one.

Yes, she had a soft spot for Pit. He was difficult not to fall in love with at least in some odd little protective way. As he walked around in Viridi's woods, he'd let the birds alight on his arm or meet some small animal he hadn't seen before and he'd immediately look heavenward and gush to Palutena about the neat things he'd discovered. Foxes and squirrels did not fear him as they would a human in their territories. To Viridi's somewhat surprise, he didn't flinch upon coming across things like spiders eating butterflies in their webs or foxes catching and killing young rabbits.

"I'm war-veteran," he'd say. Maybe his eyes were a little sad as he'd said it, but, it was true that he'd seen the Monsters of the Underworld behave very much like the Forces of Nature. He'd turn around and try to lighten the mood by reminding her, also "I've been eaten, myself!"

She didn't know how he was able to joke about almost becoming Hades' toilet-leavings, but from what she'd learned after that incident, he'd gone a little bit crazy at that point in his journey. The poor boy had been through a lot. Sometimes, when one has been through a lot, the only way to move on is to make the pain a source of comedy.

A pure heart wasn't always completely innocent, and even someone with a naïve sense of honor could know that the world around them wasn't like them, and yet choose idealism as a way of life.

Viridi wondered if he chose to throw his lot in with protecting humans not so much because Palutena had chosen them as pets, but because somewhere, deep down inside, he knew that they were broken. They were, as he was, "with broken wings." In fact, Viridi wondered if that's why Palutena had chosen Pit as her champion. Between angels that couldn't fly and humans with their destructive creativity, Palutena seemed to have favor for broken things, weak things. Viridi had always valued strength. Survival of the fittest was the way of the plants and the animals in the wild. However, looking over her domain, she sometimes had to admit that the rule didn't always apply. Very often, the evolution of Nature was the survival of the luckiest.

And Pit reminded her often that humans used what they had.

"Why can't they use tools to hunt and plows for fields? Why can't they build their cities for shelter and use weapons to defend themselves? Wolves use their teeth and badgers use their claws," he'd once argued, as they sat within Viridi's temple. "I use Palutena's blessing to fly, right? And yours sometimes. You don't seem to mind me using what I need to."

He was exasperating!

"They take more than they give," Viridi had answered. "They're like parasites."

"Aren't parasites a part of nature, too? Ticks and fleas are NASTY, but they're surviving the only way they know how."

Viridi sighed and acknowledged the truth. Maybe just because humans were a lot SMARTER than ticks and fleas didn't mean that they weren't a part of her circle of life. She was the goddess of living things, and certainly, humans were a part of the world's biology. They were caught-between, it would seem, having minds that were aware of abstracts and higher things, "hearts that could contemplate the gods," leaving them somewhere between Earth and Heaven. For the longest time, she'd given up on them, considering them "more Palutena's" than hers. She'd thought them an evolutionary-mistake and wanted to start over. Their destruction of the earth with their wars was what had clenched it. Ants had wars, too, but ants were far too small to be destructive.

And it was Pit, who flew – on her power - very close to a town at the edge of one of the largest and darkest of her forests that showed her that her rats and bats weren't the only living things capable of altruism.

He found a little girl outside the walls of a city trying to pick up something that was twitching on the ground. Viridi winced when she saw what it was, not just for the sake of the animal life she felt floundering, but because it was something she knew Pit wouldn't like to see.

"Let me help you, please!" the child said as she cupped the pathetically-failing thing in her small hands. "Mommy might know what to do. Sssh… calm down…"

Pit jogged up to her and the little girl's eyes went wide, like a surprised deer's.

Suddenly, she shouted "You aren't taking it! I wanna save it!"

"I…uh… want to help?" Pit said, rubbing the back of his head. "Let me see…"

The girl showed him a small bird – a little common barn swallow. It was different from the cave swallows. She held it gently – firmly enough so that it didn't jump out of her hands, but in a way that was mindful of its broken wing.

Pit's expression sank.

"I don't know how to help it," the girl chattered on. "I thought maybe Mommy could help it, 'cause she knows everything. She says that birds that can't fly die…"

Viridi presented Pit with a little gift at his feet.

"Whoa! A Drink of the Gods?" he said, jumping. "Is that for me? I don't need it, Viridi…"

"Try rubbing some on the bird's wing," Viridi spoke into his mind.

The angel took the bottle and poured it over the injured swallow. In moments, it burst out of the girl's hand, free in flight. The girl laughed, relieved and happy.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Angel!" she said. "I guess you can go back to the sky now."

"I can't just yet," Pit said with a rueful smile. "I can't fly."

"But…"

"The stuff I used on the bird never worked on me. I've tried."

The girl gave him a tight hug.

…

Maybe it was inevitable that an earth-bound heavenly creature would be the one to help her start to see the humans as "hers" again. As it was, Viridi decided that she wouldn't rain extinction upon humanity for as long as Pit lived. He might suffer a permanent fall in battle one day in which case Viridi's wrath would be unstoppable, but his being an immortal creature was excellent insurance that humans would be on the earth for a good, long time.

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**END. **

For my faithful reviewer, Makokam, who was probably just itching to see some Pit x Viridi from me.


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